The 1990 cover format was pretty much identical to that of 1989.

A price of $4 appeared on the Autumn cover while the Winter issue was designated as "Winter, 1990" on the cover instead of "Winter, 1990-91" which had been the format followed in previous years (and which was followed in the page footers of this issue).

The page length remained at 48 pages and followed the same page numbering scheme as in 1989 with covers and inside covers not labeled with page numbers.

Color appeared on the front and back covers but not on the insides.

The table of contents continued to appear on the back cover, continuing the tradition of a unique title for each issue:

• Spring:  take a look
• Summer:  ingredients
• Autumn:  within...
• Winter:  internal organs

A dashed line continued to surround article titles in the contents.

Second class postage permit info was printed on the back covers of the Spring and Autumn issues only.

All of this year's covers were drawn by Holly Kaufman Spruch.  The mini-covers would again continue throughout the year.  Each of this year's covers focused on events in the tumultuous hacker world.

Inside

The staff section retained credits for Editor-In-Chief, Artwork, Design, Writers, and Remote Observations (the latter correcting 1989's spelling mistake).

A new credit for Photo Salvation was added.

The Writer list ended with "the faithful anonymous bunch" for Spring and Summer, "the unusual anonymous bunch" for Autumn, and "the anonymous many" for Winter.

The Design and Photo Salvation credits were removed in Autumn, the same issue where we launched Shout Outs.  (It should be noted from the Shout Out section that Steve was our old printer and Franklin was our new laser printer.)

The staff section grew bigger in Autumn and wound up bigger still and back on page 3 for Winter.

In that issue the Editor-In-Chief credit was shared with "Alan Smithee," which is the traditional name used by film directors wanting to disown a project.  We can't comment on what it meant in this case, especially since the name was shared with the actual editor.

Mailing info continued to be printed on page 3 as required by the post office.

A new line was added in the Spring issue for "NETWORK ADDRESSES" which contained two methods of sending us email in the very early days of the Internet.  That was reduced to one address in the Summer issue.

The Autumn issue showed an addition of "(U.S. funds)" next to our prices, as we were getting all sorts of foreign checks and money orders our bank had no idea how to process.

Apart from our own house ads, we had stopped accepting advertising at this point outside of the 2600 Marketplace, which continued to appear on page 41.

The Spring issue saw the coming of our biggest story yet, a massive nationwide crackdown on hackers which would eventually lead to the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Operation Sundevil was a major part of this, but there were other raids going on at the same time and the sense of fear and doom in the hacker world was palpable.  We launched the year with a massive eight page editorial that outlined everything going on, how it all related, and what the threat was.  It was put online and reposted globally, making it one of our most read pieces ever - and gaining a ton of media and mainstream attention.  We saw the writing on the wall: "Censorship, clampdowns, 'voluntary' urine tests, lie detectors, handwriting analysis, surveillance cameras, exaggerated crises that invariably lead to curtailed freedoms..."  The hacker group known as the Legion of Doom was raided and effectively shut down.  A popular BBS known as The Phoenix Project was seized, along with more than a dozen others.  A completely uninvolved company (Steve Jackson Games) was also raided and nearly put out of business simply because one of their employees had used that BBS.  A hacker newsletter known as Phrack was shut down as a result of one of the raids, leading many to realize that electronic publishing wasn't protected in the same way as traditional paper publishers such as 2600.  We knew it could go one of two ways: either freedom of the press would be applied to all press or we could very well be next as rights became further eroded.

This wasn't that different from what we had seen before with the persecution of hackers.  We were pretty used to it.  "Who would you target as the biggest potential roadblock if not the people who understand the technology at work?"  The distinction here was the sheer number of people now being affected.  And that was what started to get attention.  We drew parallels to other eras and places: "The words and ideas are easily translatable to any time and any culture."

The words "we've come face to face with a very critical moment in history" were not an exaggeration.  The school email accounts of the Phrack editors were being monitored by the authorities, an unprecedented move at the time.  Massive amounts of private email stored on the seized BBSes were being read, in apparent violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.  But what was probably the most blatant example of the abuse of power being set loose here was the declaration that a leaked document published in Phrack was worth $79,449.  (We decided to have some fun with that and offer copies for $20,000 less in our pages.)  In addition to the dangerous precedent of punishing a publisher for leaked documents that came into their possession, the declaration turned out to be an outright lie: the document could be obtained legally for only $13, a fact that came out at the trial later in the year, thanks to a whistleblower who had become aware of what was going on through the massive campaign we were involved in.  One positive thing that came from all of this was that we learned the power of electronic communications in getting the word out on the Neidorf case.

The charges were dropped in the middle of the trial, leaving Phrack publisher Craig Neidorf vindicated but heavily in debt due to the legal expense.  The impression that the newly formed EFF would be a hacker legal defense fund turned out not to be the case and there seemed to be an attempt to distance themselves from hackers in those early days, much to the hacker community's consternation.

Needless to say, our perspective was not the only one on the subject and we devoted a bit of space to some of the criticism we were getting for taking the stand we did.  We also got a good bit of critique from members of the hacker community who took umbrage at our talking to the media at all, thinking no good could possibly come from it.  Our position was that we had to get the word out somehow - and that this was worth taking a chance on a reporter getting the message.  We had some successes and that was enough to want to keep going.

The 2600 meetings expanded to San Francisco in 1990.  We also had a bit of fun at the New York meeting when we discovered we were under surveillance, a fact later admitted to by the New York State Police.  Needless to say, pictures were printed.

Payphone photos were now a regular feature on the inside front cover.  2600 BBSes, however, had become a thing of the past.  We saw Touch-Tone fees start to be eliminated and the term "slamming" was used for the first time.

Robert T. Morris was sentenced to a fine and probation for accidentally unleashing the Internet worm back in 1988.  An article on Customer Owned Coin Operated Telephones (COCOT) in the Summer issue drew lots of attention, both positive and negative.  This was also the case for an article in the Autumn issue that revealed a credit card algorithm.  Critics who felt the only possible purpose for this was to help in credit card fraud were rebuffed by a letter expressing gratitude from a credit card processing office that now had a way to verify numbers free of charge.

The Autumn issue also saw a milestone: the plans for converting a RadioShack tone dialer into a Red Box.  This would prove to be a major pain in the ass for phone companies for many years to come.

Interestingly enough, when a reader first suggested the idea of converting a tone dialer into a Red Box, we dismissed it, saying "there wouldn't be much point."  Fortunately, more enlightened heads prevailed.

As the year closed, GTE was on the verge of becoming the nation's largest phone company after acquiring Contel.  Caller ID was getting more prevalent, and phone companies everywhere were fighting the option that allowed callers to block their numbers from being sent.  Bulgaria had become a breeding ground for computer viruses and BellSouth became the first Regional Bell Operating Company to go completely electronic.  There were calls for more magazines like 2600 and, in the wake of all of the raids, we were calling for more BBSes: "The need for public hacker boards has never been greater."

Overall, it was a turbulent year, with a fair amount of leaks getting printed and lots of talk of privacy, wiretaps, and the like.  Throughout it all, we tried to maintain a feeling of hope by emphasizing: "Technology in the hands of imaginative people can do wonderful things."  We had seen quite a bit of the flip-side already.

Spring:  Spring 1990 focused on the aftermath of a massive series of raids that shocked and traumatized the entire hacker community.

The hacker newsletter Phrack was shut down, many arrests were made, and the future looked bleak.

The setting for this cover is the inside of a dance hall, where five guys are standing in various baseball uniforms, each representing one of the cities in the vicinity of the raids: New York, Chicago, Atlanta, St. Louis, and Houston.

Surveillance cameras are everywhere, marked with the insignia "For Your Protection," which was also the title of this issue's eight page editorial, which pretty much summed up the whole sordid story.

A security guard aims a gun at our suspects, with the insignia of "F.Y.P." on his shirt.

A message scrolling on the wall reads: "Come In Number 2599, Your Time Is Up..."  This is a reference to a Pink Floyd song as well as an expression of concern, as it was widely feared that our number was coming up next.

"Acid House" is scrawled on the wall, a reference to the genre of music, but since there's a camera in the way, it could also read "Acid's House," a reference to a local hacker and 2600 contributor named Acid Phreak, whose home had also been raided.

There is a door labeled "Exit or Entrance" with a foot in it.  Someone is either about to enter or leave.  The future was uncertain.

The mini-cover has the phrase "The Whole World's Watching," an iconic chant from anti-war protesters in Chicago back in 1968, but also a message to current-day authorities that their actions were being scrutinized.